In recent years it has become more and more popular to employ the use of plastic enclosures for electronic devices, including computer peripherals such as modems. It is sometimes desirable, from both an aesthetic point of view and a functional point of view with respect to the angular disposition of displays, to have a slanted front panel bezel provided as part of an enclosure.
Well known limitations in the art of injection molding require that molded parts be constructed so that all parts of the resulting piece are aligned such that two mold halves may be designed to mold all the parts and that these mold halves may be withdrawn in a co-linear fashion away from the finished piece. This places certain limitations on the geometry of structures which may be made using injection molding techniques.
In the past, the construction of a molded plastic enclosure with a slanted front portion has normally been accomplished by molding the entire assembly as a single piece. This, naturally, leads to the result that the slanted and non-slanted portions of the front panel must be constructed in the same type of plastic. It is sometimes desirable to provide color differentiation between the slanted front portion and the other portions of the cabinet. To accomplish this result in the prior art, it has been necessary to undergo the separate step of painting the slanted portion.
Also, in some electronics assemblies, it is desirable to have separate electronic components, particularly self-contained display and keyboard devices, located in the slanted portion. Since it is normally necessary to securely mount a display device to the front panel, this leads to difficulties in assembly of such devices when the front panel portion is made of unitary construction with another significant portion of the cabinet.
The situation which gave rise to the need for the present invention was a desire to have a front panel bezel for a sophisticated modem which met all of the following criteria. First, it was desired that the front panel bezel be slanted with respect to the balance of the front portion of the equipment enclosure. Secondly, it is highly desired to provide a color differentiation between the slanted front panel bezel and the balance of the enclosure.
Additionally, the front panel in the device which gave rise to the present invention was one containing a liquid crystal display in a keyboard subassembly. There is a need to mount both the LCD display and the keyboard very securely to the front panel bezel. It was therefore desired to provide an arrangement where this subassembly could be made and ultimately connected to the electronics within the device via a ribbon cable or similar connector. Naturally, it was desired to avoid the costly step of painting or providing some other separate step for external application of a different color.
From the foregoing, the inventors were faced with the need for a slanted front panel bezel structure which could be molded separately from the balance of the equipment enclosure in question. This would allow the problem of color differentiation to become trivial since different color plastic could be used for the two parts. It was further desired to have such a separate piece which could have a display and keyboard subassembly securely attached thereto and have the entire subassembly joined, at a later point in the production process, with the rest of the apparatus.
However, there was no apparently practical way to meet all of these goals and still provide a front panel bezel which could be securely fastened to the balance of the equipment enclosure, and at the same time could be unfastened for replacement or repair at a later date. Naturally, if gluing with some form of permanent cement, such as epoxy, were an option, the problem of assembly would become trivial, albeit messy. However, there was a significant need for providing the combination of enclosure components which could be replaceable. Once such need rises from the obvious possibility that some portion of the apparatus will fail after final assembly. If a solution such as permanent gluing were adopted, the failure of a keyboard or display component would lead to destruction of the entire cabinet. It was to overcome these problems that the present inventors made the present invention.